Arne Slot has dismissed questions on his lack of rotation after making only one change for Liverpool’s 3-2 loss at Fulham, insisting his players are used to it.
Slot’s only alteration from the 1-0 victory over Everton on Wednesday was to bring Cody Gakpo in for Luis Diaz, but he witnessed a laboured first half at Craven Cottage.
Though Liverpool took the lead through Alexis Mac Allister‘s thunderbolt, they went into the break 3-1 down after a series of costly errors allowed Ryan Sessegnon, Alex Iwobi and Rodrigo Muniz to score.
It was only when Slot turned to his bench in the second half – most notably with the introduction of Luis Diaz, Harvey Elliott and Conor Bradley – that things improved.
But asked in his post-match press conference whether he regretted not rotating his squad more to freshen things up, the head coach replied: “No, no, no.
“Not because of that reason, because there were four days in between and we’ve shown many times this season that that’s not a problem at all for us. These players as well.
“I don’t think the errors we’ve made have anything to do with players being tired.
“And again, I know how it works, it’s everywhere the same in football: if you concede three goals in the first half, everybody is like ‘wow, that was a disaster’.
“Now if you look back on it, knowing that you concede three, you will probably see a few good moments as well, because there were also good moments from us in buildup.
“I think on the half-hour I looked and it was 1-1, I was like ‘OK, it’s not our best game, but we have control over the game’.
“But then all of a sudden I blinked my eyes and we were 3-1 down.”
In Slot’s eyes, then, Liverpool’s failure in west London was more down to freak errors than a collective tiredness, though there are wider concerns over a number of players.
It is not often that Virgil van Dijk finds himself in that group of those whose performances are scrutinised, but the captain has certainly struggled in recent games.
However Slot has insisted any question marks over Van Dijk is more down to the quality and profile of strikers he has faced this week.
“I mainly give credit to other players as well,” he explained.
“Virgil is not the first defender who finds it difficult to play against Beto, because every time he’s chasing for every ball, pushes you just before you get the ball.
“The one who played there today (Muniz), you have to give credit to as well.
“I still see a lot, lot, lot of things Virgil does really well.
“And if you play 50, 60 games a season there will be, also even for him, one or two moments where he could have done better.
“But in general, if you look at Virgil’s performance against Everton, except for the one time he missed the ball, he was outstanding. I don’t worry about him.”
